So when a press release contains the phrase “unholy message through their blasphemous lyrics” and the word “90-ties”…you know you’re in for something brilliant. Throne of Katarsis are a daft black metal research team that has seemingly chosen to focus solely on being something called “true atmospheric occult” – whatever the fuck that means. And, at the expense of originality, creativity, song-writing, and musicianship they have succeeded.

How long will trash like this be allowed to come out? As long as the same mouth-breathing shitheads buy it, I suppose. AN ETERNAL DARK HORIZON desperately wants to be the missing link between Burzum’s FILOSOFEM and Enslaved’s godly VIKINGLIGR VELDI. Instead, however, are boys, Grimnisse (insert McDonald’s joke here) and Vardalv, have created a sleepy minimalist black metal record that is just smothered in its own corny asshole.

Each track clocks in at, or above, ten minutes. So in addition to being boring, AN ETERNAL DARK HORIZON is also pretentious. Sonically, the gelatinous vertebra of this band is made up of lo-fi razor riffs (of the Fenriz-reject variety) and raspy, early Bathory-esque, chanting. There’s some effort to use the percussion as some kind of vehicle for the “dark evil forest winter” theme…but for the most part these endeavors fall flat due to the tasteless riffs surrounding them. There are a few laconic classical acoustic parts…but we’ve all heard better from Ulver and Lord Belial.

Grimnisse and Vardalv have repeatedly stated their want to imitate the pure Norwegian “early 90-ties” gods of black metal…but this is just a sorry excuse for being narrow-minded and uncreative. You have to do more than just parrot those before you… otherwise, it just becomes some kind of advanced form of schizophrenia.